


For but a Measure

by tirsynni



Category: X-Men: First Class (2011) - Fandom
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Pre-Slash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-04
Updated: 2015-01-04
Packaged: 2018-03-05 09:34:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,454
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3115139
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tirsynni/pseuds/tirsynni
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which taking a psychic coin to the brain affects Charles more than planned, and not so much a fix-it as a possible new path opening.</p>
            </blockquote>





	For but a Measure

From childhood, Charles Xavier knew pain, love, fear, desire, and life. He knew life and all the little components, good and bad, hopeful and harmful, which made it up. He knew the absence of a mind and equated it with death.

Erik putting on Shaw’s helmet was horrifying. Being in Shaw’s mind when the coin drilled through his skull was worse.

Charles knew Sebastian Shaw was dead before Erik elevated his corpse out of the sub. Even as he stumbled from the plane, he felt not just the absence of life but the _dying_ shuddering through his mind, streaking through his veins like poison.

Now he knew life, death, and _dying_ , and before today he never knew the space between them. He felt it now in the phantom hole in his head, the whispery blood sliding down his face.

Erik descended like an angel from one of his nanny’s stories. Charles trudged forward, barely aware of Moira beside him. He felt her fear scratching at him like a rat trapped in a cage. Only when Charles tried to block her out did Charles realize he couldn’t.

He couldn’t block any of them out.

_Erik!_ he screamed but Erik didn’t blink. Even as everyone else slammed against his mind like waves against the shore, Erik remained silent. Gone.

Like death.

_Fearanticpationnervousnesshorrorconfusion_ swamped him and routine more than anything else kept Charles’ feet moving. He reached again for the soothing stability of Erik’s mind and slammed against that damned helmet.

_Erik…_

Even over the roar in his skull, Charles heard Shaw’s body hit the beach like so much meat.

“Take off your blinders, my brothers and sisters.” A new chill crept through Charles’ veins, freezing him to the core. He couldn’t look away from Erik’s face. “The real enemy is out there!”

Erik pointed and Charles’ mind seemed to expand to follow, the hole in his skull sucking in the fear and wariness of the humans like a black hole.

“I feel their guns moving in the water,” and Charles felt their fingers moving, automatic and separate from their brains, “their metal targeting us: Americans, Soviets…” Erik paused, the silence echoing where Erik’s mind should be fitted alongside Charles’ own. “Humans. United in their fear of the unknown.”

Charles couldn’t separate his fear from those around him, but it didn’t stop him from walking toward Erik, echoing his steps.

“The Neanderthal is running scared, my fellow mutants!” Erik declared, but it wasn’t just the humans reeking of fear: everyone was. Charles felt like he was drowning in it. He pulled at his shields but they seemed to fall into the hole left by Erik’s coin.

Charles still couldn’t look away from Erik’s face.

Erik finally looked in Charles’ direction, but he didn’t need to use his powers to know that Erik wasn’t seeing him. “Go ahead, Charles.” Automatically, he raised a hand to his temple, despite knowing he didn’t need it. He didn’t need any help accessing his powers right then. “Tell me I’m wrong.”

Fear…and determination. The soldiers themselves were so afraid and uncertain, most having no clue what was going on. On each ship, one mind stood alone, one American and one Soviet, united in that determination.

Even if no one else knew what was happening, they had made their decision.

Charles nodded at Moira, but it was out of convention more than anything else. _One more chance, one more chance_ , even as _fearfearfear_ lapped at him, pulling him under. He felt his own hope and despair but he was losing himself under the crush of those around him like he hadn’t since he was a child. He dragged at his shields but knew it was useless. All of it was useless.

Moira’s fear spiked. Charles exhaled, feeling _fear_ drive into his splintered psyche. He raised his hands to his temples even as he crumpled to his knees. The fear turned into a tempest of emotion, pouring into the hole in his skull and raging down into his chest like a waterfall.

Even as Charles whispered into those two minds – so similar despite their different backgrounds – he had no idea if he was making the decision to do so or was just helplessly riding the waves.

He pulled the fear from their minds and let it join the hurricane in his own. He whispered Moira’s message over and over and _pushed_ it deep into their minds until they couldn’t help but believe it. He took their fear of the monsters on the shore like a parent turning on the light and opening the closet door.

Charles felt their decision, felt the soldiers move, felt the threat diminish. Strangely enough, the fear on the beach around him didn’t fade.

When he pulled back, he still didn’t feel like he was in his own body. Charles saw himself lying on the beach through half a dozen eyes, saw himself cradled in Erik’s arms.

_Charles!_ “Charles!” and _finally_ he felt Erik’s mind again. He smiled weakly and clung to it like it was his only haven in the storm.

He supposed it was.

“Erik,” he breathed, and then he lost himself in that black hole.

xoxoxoxo

Charles’ power increased when he was a teenager, the spike of hormones and the crash of puberty strengthening more than physical muscles; however, he always had the ability to touch the minds around him. As a child, he could never truly shut out others’ feelings and dreams. In the end, he focused on serenity, clung to it rather than lose himself in the chaotic swamp around him. He learned to keep quiet and watch his responses. Wait for them to speak and _then_ respond. Wait for physical cues rather than mental ones.

_A changeling_ , some older members of the staff called him. Sometimes, they gave him extra milk and honey. Others whispered of disorders and mental hospitals.

The dreams proved most difficult to master. At night, in the dark, his defenses were low and the dreams assaulted him from all sides. By the time Raven settled and his mother remarried, Charles had managed a new form of balance, of compromise, between restful and guarded sleep.

He felt like a child now, but the ever existing dissonance in his mind told him otherwise. Unfortunately, that only magnified his cognitive discord.

The land around his home was white and crisp with snow, marred only by the bloody footprints leading into the woods. Charles followed those steps, feeling the overlap between his mind and the dreamer’s. His clean snow clashed with the harsh red blood like his enforced serenity clashed with his adult feet.

Erik. Charles recognized that familiar brand of rage. It reverberated between the snow-dusted trees. It burned in each bloody footstep. Like always, since the first, Charles followed Erik’s lead.

Dreams could be noisy or silent. On the ground, the snow cushioned all sound except an odd, wet plopping noise. Above him, through, a storm rumbled. In each low roar of thunder, Charles heard whispers and felt the subtle backlash of emotion like electricity in the air: Raven, Hank, Alex, Angel, and others he didn’t immediately recognize. Only the strength of Erik’s personality kept them back.

Charles clung to it and followed the footsteps, noting the blood growing brighter and fresher with even step. No sign of Erik, even as the woods grew dark around him, the bloody trail all but the only signs of life.

The _plop plop_ continued, wet and oddly sickening.

“Erik?” Charles called, but the snow and trees ate up the sound. Charles shivered and wrapped his arms around himself. Only then did he realize he still wore his flightsuit. He looked down, seeing sand scattered on the blue and yellow.

And also saw blood.

It plopped on his suit, in the snow. Slowly, Charles reached up and touched his nose.

It was a dream, so he knew not to expect heat or wetness. Memory filled the gaps instead, power surges as a teenager overwhelmed by Cain’s hate and other times when his stepfather forewent subtlety and struck him in the face.

He gave Raven multiple excuses, including reaching for books on too-high shelves and slipping. She believed him.

Charles shook off those taunting memories and rubbed the blood between his fingers. He remembered now. The beach…falling… Memories tore from their neat, individual boxes and rose with reddened claws and teeth.

Not now. Another headshake and shaky exhale. This wasn’t his dream, after all. He couldn’t afford to lose control.

“Erik?” he called again, and again the snow swallowed all sound.

Except the constant plopping of his blood.

Charles absently wiped it away and kept walking. Erik had to be around here somewhere.

Above him, the sky grew darker, a tumultuous swirl of blackening clouds and flickering lightning. Fear and anxiety pressed down until Charles could feel it in his bones. It pressed harder, harder, rising pressure against him and in his skull. Gripping his head like he could keep it together by sheer will, Charles fell to his knees.

“Just a dream,” he gasped, and he had mastered this years ago. _All_ of this. Why…?

_Plop. Plop_.

Carefully, Charles reached up and wiped at his forehead. When he looked down at his hand, the blood glistened garishly on his glove.

“Enough,” Charles commanded but the snow – Erik’s dream – devoured it like it was nothing.

Around him, the trees twisted, less the serenity of his home and more like something out of an old, brutal fairytale. The forest seemed to watch Charles as he pushed himself back to his feet.

_Fearfearfear_ thundered above him. Charles staggered on.

The bloodied path led on and on, darkening trees growing grey and hard. Snow shifted into mud, but the bright red blood continued to glow like a beacon.

When the path eventually led to a beach, Charles wished he was surprised.

He walked past the torn carcass of the Blackbird and the scattered flames burning ancient bones. He walked past the sprawled corpses of Alex and Hank and a woman he only recognized from Erik’s mind, all bloody and dead-eyed and accusing. He walked to the shore, where Erik held Charles’ own still body in his arms. Beyond them, Shaw watched, smiling and bleeding.

“Erik,” Charles called. Erik looked up from where he cradled Charles’ body and blinked. Erik’s eyes were bruised and damp. Red stained his flightsuit and even marred one cheek. Charles could see his own eyes, wide and staring up at Erik, more blue than Charles could ever remember seeing in the mirror. Charles swallowed and then licked his lips. None of it made him feel better. “Erik, my friend…you are dreaming.” A step forward, not looking at his own dead face. Did he look like that to Erik?

Erik stirred, although he still didn’t loosen his grip. Above them, the storm continued to rage. “Charles?” His gaze flicked between the corpse in his lap and the living version. “A dream? Of course…”

Still, Charles noted how he hugged the body in his arms once before gently laying him – it – down in the sand. There was something there – in his looks and touches – that Charles feared to dwell on. With Erik’s past, such care for a friend was not unusual, particularly a deceased one.

Erik staggered to his feet, so slowly and painfully that Charles expected to hear the creak of old bones. “A dream,” Erik repeated. There was a curious blankness to Erik’s gaze which chilled Charles. How odd that he appeared to be trapped in Erik’s mind yet had no idea what the other man was thinking.

Then Erik’s eyes widened and he reached out for Charles. The gap between them seemed endless. Erik’s hand faltered in that interminable space, fingers twitching. “Charles…you’re bleeding…”

Oh. Yes. Charles absently touched two fingers to his upper lip, then to his forehead. “Psychic damage, I think. I’m not sure. This has never happened before.”

As Erik just stared at him, Charles looked out over the water. Shaw was still there, less a man and more a specter, and dozens of missiles loomed over his head like vengeful angels, straight out of his nanny’s stories. Her subtlety or lack thereof meant little to Charles’ telepathy and later even less to his atheism. If nothing else, he could recall no story where European changeling met Middle Eastern angels.

The missiles… Charles whirled back to Erik, who jerked his hand away. Pain flashed hot and bright between them, more electricity in the air. When did everything go so wrong? Become so broken?

No. Not now.

“What happened to the missiles?”

Erik shook his head like he was trying to wake from this twisted dream. “They never launched. You stopped them. Charles…” He looked back at Charles and extended his hand. This time, Charles took it before Erik could retract it, pointedly intertwining their fingers. “You passed out in Cuba. Azazel – the teleporter – helped transport all of us to your mansion before he left. You never… Charles, are you all right?”

Erik used their tangled fingers to pull Charles close. Charles let him, let him wrap his arms around him and let the strength of Erik’s mind shield him. Those mocking memories of Raven, his stepfamily, and his nanny unwillingly pulled back, but a shadow away. “I’m all right. How is everyone else?”

Erik’s scoff shook them both. “Recovering. Alive. You were bleeding…are _still_ bleeding here. What happened?”

Still… Charles wiggled a hand between them to touch his upper lip again. Still bleeding. Could he bleed out in a dream? The blood didn’t linger after hitting the ground. The blood lingering wasn’t the point. The bleeding itself was. It streamed relentlessly from his noise, dripping from his lips and chin. More blood trickled from the hole in his head.

New trauma, at least, regarding the psychic coin to the brain, but it wasn’t the first time he overloaded himself. “I just need rest, I believe. Too much…”

His voice trailed off as Erik gently touched his forehead. “Was this…from Schmidt?”

Behind Erik, the dead man watched, smiling an odd smile with thin lips hiding his teeth. His forehead bled in time with Charles’.

“Side-effect of holding him still,” Charles agreed. Erik scowled but more thoughtful than angry, even if the rage trembled in the waves on the shore. “I just need to sleep.”

“And dream?” Erik’s fingers touched the bloody wound. “Does this hurt?”

Charles shook his head. There _was_ pain, but it was held back, in the snow and within the dark trees, the places where Charles’ mind meshed with Erik’s own.

Around them, the beach shivered. Lightning streaked above. Together, Charles and Erik looked up and watched the clouds roil in the sky.

“You’re waking up,” Charles said. He reached up and tangled Erik’s fingers with his own, Charles’ blood staining their hands. “Please, if you don’t mind, stay close. Your mind is…orderly.”

Unlike the storm above. Erik nodded and squeezed Charles’ fingers, holding Charles’ hand between them.

Then Erik was gone and Charles was in the snow again, outside the mansion. With a slow exhale, Charles stared at the dark sky.

_Stay close_ , he asked, the memory of the helmet gleaming in every shadowed tree.

“Please,” Charles said aloud. In the darkness of his own mind, no one answered.

xoxoxox

Charles drifted and drifted, through snow and rain and sand and hail. He dreamed that he was in a bar in London and New York. He dreamed that he was standing outside his mother’s door, listening to her cry and someone else cried, too. He dreamed of blood and graveyards made of stone and metal. Screams and sobs echoed but he never found their source.

Charles dreamed until he suddenly didn’t, something cold and hard coiled around his wrist and a voice whispering in German above his head.

“Erik?” he tried to say, but only a stuttered moan emerged. The flow of German stopped. Charles tried again: _Erik?_

An abrupt spike of pain between his eyes made him flinch. Warm, large hands clutched his left hand. “Charles?”

Yes, definitely Erik. Charles absently squeezed Erik’s hand – yes, I am here, I am fine – as he took stock. His head felt like he had repeatedly headbutted a wall but his shields – although wobbly – were back. A low grade ache infused his body, muscles silently protesting…something. Something pinched and tugged at his right inner elbow.

As for the rest… Erik’s beautiful, clear mind shone above him, unimpeded by that damned helmet. He reached out and felt Raven’s drowsy mind, tight with strain and some hidden shame. Reassured that she was at least physically all right, Charles remembered his promise and moved on. Hank, Sean, Alex…there was the tinge of something else, a faint but familiar consciousness, but Charles didn’t push. Later, when it didn’t feel like his brain was ready to leak out his nose.

“Charles?” Erik asked insistently, squeezing Charles’ hand. “You need to open your eyes.”

Actually, Charles really, really didn’t. Honestly, Charles shouldn’t, but the tumult of Erik’s emotions forced his eyes open.

Oh yes. That hurt.

He met Erik’s eyes long enough to see the worry there before slamming his own shut again. “Stop looking at me like that.” His voice sounded like he had gargled _rocks_ , for goodness’ sake. “I’ll be all right. You needn’t worry.”

Erik’s denial _pressed_ against Charles’ brain. Charles groaned and restlessly rolled his head away from Erik. “Yes,” Erik commented drolly. “I can see that.”

Charles grimaced. “Status?”

Erik’s fingers loosened around Charles’ but continued to still hold with an odd tension, like he expected Charles to make a break for it. Well, Charles supposed, he could roll off…was he on his bed? It didn’t feel like it.

“The children are fine.” Erik’s speech could only be described as bit out, short and curt and thrumming with dark emotion. “The human went back to the CIA to destroy evidence of our existence. She will be back when she is done.”

The human…Moira… Charles exhaled slowly and brought his free hand to rub at the rising pain in his temple. He had barely touched the skin, though, when Erik grabbed his hand. “Erik! What –”

“Do _not_ use your powers,” Erik growled, and the pressure of _fearragedetermination_ grew. It pulsed at Charles’ skull. Feebly, he pulled at his shields again, feeling like a child trying to hide under a favorite tattered blanket. “ _Mein Gott_ , Charles, you –”

Then both hands were gone. Charles peeked through his lashes to see Erik jump to his feet. Charles half-expected him to pace but he stood still instead, quivering with pent-up energy.

“The humans were going to _kill_ us, Charles,” Erik snarled. Charles closed his eyes again. “After we had already saved their pathetic lives, they were prepared to bomb the beach. They were nothing but animals reacting to a threat, heedless of all else.”

Oh. Another slow breath. His skull throbbed but his shields held steady.

“They were frightened,” Charles said quietly, and he could still feel it like a black hole beneath his feet. “They aren’t ready for us.”

He felt Erik’s argument vibrating in the air and stalled it with a raised hand, fingers open and inviting. This was not an argument he could begin to fight while at less than 100%. Erik matched fear with pure, stubborn rage, and the trail of dead Nazis behind him proved how fatal that rage could be.

“Erik,” Charles said. He didn’t want to say more. He trusted Erik but…

No. He couldn’t handle any “but’s” right now. Charles felt too frayed and vulnerable and couldn’t open his eyes or his mind to see Erik. Later, inevitably later.

The air seemed to tremble between them before Erik sighed. Like that, the tension seeped from the room like a popped balloon. Charles heard Erik sit back down and felt Erik wrap strong fingers around his own.

A heartbeat. Two. Three. Charles relaxed on the…cot? Yes, a cot. The infirmary then. He carefully squeezed Erik’s hand. Warmth flooded him when Erik squeezed back.

“Stopping them almost killed you, Charles,” Erik murmured. He squeezed Charles’ hand again. “I will _not_ let it reach that point again.”

Shaw was stopped, the world was saved, and yet Charles could not help but feel the war had only begun, a precipice before them straight out of Erik’s dreams. For now, though…

Erik brought Charles’ hand to his lips and kissed it, chapped lips lingering tenderly on cold skin. Charles shivered and felt Erik smile against his hand.

For now, they had bought themselves a measure of peace and hopefully just a bit more.


End file.
